Today's gadget request...

Today's gadget request...

Is there a network "appliance" that will allow adding music to your network, retrievable at some other location on the network? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson
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Sure. The generic term is "NAS" - network-attached storage. A simple NAS consists of a hard drive (usually SATA these days), and a small network-controller interface which speaks one or more common network filesystem protocols (e.g. SMB to talk to Windows clients, NFS to talk to Unix-style, etc.). Some NAS controllers have built-in streaming protocol support as well (e.g. Shoutcast or the like). They usually have a built-in Web server which provides a network administration interface.

Put one of these on your network, and you can treat it like any "shared drive" on a computer... except that there's no full-fledged computer attached to it. Some of them support multiple drives, with several levels of RAID storage expansion and redundency.

This week's ad from Fry's is advertising a Hitachi "SimpleNET" mini-NAS. It's a little dongle with an Ethernet jack on one side and a USB host jack on the other. Plug in in between your network and a USB external hard drive, and it becomes a NAS. It sells for $40 (plus the cost of the external drive).

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

Don't some of those block MP3s? Or is that just over WAN?

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

In Itunes (on MacOS or Windows) just open the preferences and click 'share my library on my local network'.

Or, do you want to make a streaming server that gloms the music coming from your old vinyls (or older lacquers) and netcasts that?

Reply to
whit3rd

A streaming audio server, like the internet radio stations use? It's probably available free if you've got a Linux machine lying around.

formatting link

Disclaimer: I have _no clue_ how hard this would be to set up.

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

I just want a gozinta-gozouta (*) real time feed... so the wife can hear "Martha" in her office, from the ROKU in my office :-)

I actually have my own personalized schematic port symbols named "gozinta", "gozouta" and "gozbi" :-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I use a Slingbox to get cable TV into the office for those late night IT sessions. There are several media adapters that give the stereo or the television and IP address. Specifically, that then allows you to stream the computer content to an existing entertainment device.

Once you have the IP address, it's simply a matter of forwarding it through the router / firewall to the outside world. The proviso is that some IP ranges are not transmittable through the router. 192 is one such address. FTP box do a similar function though few stream content ... they use TCP/ IP to guarantee packet delivery where as devices meant to stream media typically use UDP.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net ---

Reply to
Jon

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Inside the local network is almost a no brainer....

WMA11B Wireless-B Media Adapter NETGEAR Wireless Digital Music Player

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Reply to
Jon

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Couldn't you just get her a Roku for her office as well?

I think many people aren't quite certain what you're after here... for your wife's office do you want a box with speakers? Just an audio jack? Is it OK to use a computer instead of a dedicated box?

For your office... you want something with... an analog audio input jack? Or...?

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Yeah. It's called buy a nettop computer and make it into a media server, wireless or wired. Most have HDMI out, etc.

If you buy the dedicated "media server" crap that is out there, you get handcuffed to their set-up and all their limitations, which are great in number..

If you buy a $200 PC, you can set it up however you want. XBMC (XBox Media Center)through Windows or from within Linux. That is currently the most popular media server software currently available.

Plays movies, music, does pictures, gets the weather and drags song info and movie info of all your titles. Grabs its own updates.

Popped mine up from a 160GB drive to a 320GB 7200 rpm drive and jumped it from 1GB RAM to 4GB, so I am now up to $400. Add the monitor and we are at $600 as it is a 24" display.

The best thing about it is that it plays just about anything.

You have to add an external USB CD/DVD drive to it to get disc access, and to install an OS. It is also possible to do with a USB stick. Once up, however, it can handle remote operation etc, via the net hooks.

Reply to
Copacetic

A true NAS does NOT examine ANY file activity in ANY way.

Reply to
Copacetic

formatting link

You mean like this guy did?

Reply to
Copacetic

Both overtly overpriced and extremely limited.

Reply to
Copacetic

Perhaps that would be best... my tastes run to disco ;-)

My ROKU => JVC audio system. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

How about a FM transmitter?

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

formatting link

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

That's really astonishing. Wow! I wonder if some large media producer wrote them a rather large check to add such nonsense?

Reply to
Joel Koltner

That device requires proprietary drivers operating on each client and therefore does not qualify for the true definition of what an NAS is.

Folks should speak out against that crap. Thank Sony and Apple for all this stupidity. Folks will soon move to FLAC and start over again. Ooops too late.

An NAS

They are transparent FILE servers that allow attachment by ANY requestor with the correct credentials.

The ONLY configuration a true NAS has is that of formatting the hard drive upon first initialization, and allowing clients access.

----- NOT monitoring, in any way, shape, or form, ANY "DRM" styled, file level information or "rights management" horseshit.

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An NAS

Once authenticated, a user with access should simply have access to "a volume" on his local machine. The format is transparent, and the NAS acts simply as a pure file server, not examining anything about the actual files themselves at all. Individual user directory level security is all that is needed. Especially if it is running Linux inside. It would be like a router with files instead of ports.

Reply to
Copacetic

Now _there's_ a damaging admission. Back around 1980, I was so sick of disco that even Van Halen was a huge breath of fresh air.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

My statement remains unchanged.

Any asshole company can make a device and call it by a name that any Barnum and Bailey every minute born sucker would buy thinking that it actually was what it was being touted as by the asshole company.

An NAS is transparent to the damned files being stored. Period. The first hint that it is NOT a true NAS is when they want you to install a client 'driver', and deny you access to the physical drive itself.

Buy Hitachi (was IBM, the masters), or Seagate. Fuck WD.

Reply to
Copacetic

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